Soil Health and Arthropods: From Complex System to Worthwhile Investigation

Abstract

The dramatic increase in soil degradation in the last few decades has led to the need to identify methods to define not only soil quality but also, in a holistic approach, soil health. In the past twenty years, indices based on living communities have been proposed alongside the already proven physical-chemical methods. Among them, some soil invertebrates have been included in monitoring programs as bioindicators of soil quality. Being an important portion of soil fauna, soil arthropods are involved in many soil processes such as organic matter decomposition and translocation, nutrient cycling, microflora activity regulation and bioturbation. Many studies have reported the use of soil arthropods to define soil quality; among taxa, some have been explored more in depth, typically Acari and Collembola, while generally less abundant groups, such as Palpigradi or Embioptera, have not been investigated much. This paper aims to evaluate and compare the use of different soil microarthropod taxa in soil degradation/quality studies to highlight which groups are the most reported for soil monitoring and which are the most sensitive to soil degradation. We have decided not to include the two most present and abundant taxa, Acari and Collembola, in this paper in consideration of the vast amount of existing literature and focus the discussion on the other microarthropod groups. We reported some studies for each taxon highlighting the use of the group as soil quality indicator. A brief section reporting some indices based on soil microarthropods is proposed at the end of this specific discussion. This paper can be considered as a reference point in the use of soil arthropods to estimate soil quality and health.

Arthropod Communities in Urban Agricultural Production Systems under Different Irrigation Sources in the Northern Region of Ghana

“…The decomposer species Chironomus plumosus (Dipterans, Chironomidae) was found especially under well- and wastewater conditions. Chironomidae are known to prefer decaying organic amendments [ 54 ]. Considering only the CWM values for decomposers may indicate the usefulness of this guild as an indicator group for non-contaminated soil and water conditions and, therefore, ecosystem health in UPA systems.…”

Diversity patterns of plants and arthropods in soybean agro-ecosystems in the Grassland Biome of South Africa

“…In agricultural habitats plant diversity is important for erosion control, maintenance of soil fertility, buffering the movement of agrochemicals to natural habitats, and climate regulation (Gaba et al 2015;Isbell et al 2017). Arthropods serve as useful bioindicators of disturbance due to their short generation time and rapid response to environmental change (Ghannem et al 2018;Menta and Remelli 2020). As consumers, arthropods comprise many important functional groups including herbivores, pollinators, detritivores, predators, and parasitoids.…”

IRRISENS: An IoT Platform Based on Microservices Applied in Commercial-Scale Crops Working in a Multi-Cloud Environment

“…Parameters important to irrigation planning such as precipitation can only be forecast and there is no guarantee that it may occur. Furthermore, the soil may be considered as a complex system [54] in which there are emergent behaviours that would be taken into consideration for effective irrigation control.…”